EU staff unions braced for squeeze on pay and perks

Staff working in the European Union’s institutions are braced for an attack on their pay, pensions and perks as the leaders of the national governments argue over the Union’s future spending.

A summit called to hammer out a deal on the EU’s spending in 2014-20 will begin today in Brussels. Although scheduled for two days, government delegations and Council staff have been warned that negotiations could be prolonged into the weekend.

The EU’s staff unions have called a general assembly meeting next Tuesday (27 November) to discuss the outcome of the summit and what their response should be.

They had scheduled a strike by officials working in the secretariat of the Council of Ministers for yesterday (21 November), but cancelled the industrial action after a meeting with Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. Van Rompuy gave them assurances that he would defend administrative spending. Instead the unions held a demonstration outside the Berlaymont, the Commission’s headquarters.

David Cameron, the United Kingdom’s prime minister, is leading the calls for cuts to spending on staff pay. He told British business leaders on Monday (19 November): “One of the interesting things about the proposals so far in this debate about the EU budget is how little attention there has been on the central costs of the EU, the Commission budget, what people get paid.”

Cameron has pledged to fight to freeze the multiannual financial framework (MFF) at current levels and has the support, in principle, of several other member states including France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. They have called for the Commission to come up with scenarios for cutting €5 billion, €10bn and €15bn from administrative spending.

One member-state ambassador said yesterday that it was “odd” that Van Rompuy was not proposing deeper reductions in administrative spending in his proposal for the 2014-20 MFF. Van Rompuy has suggested a cut of €536 million to the Commission’s proposal by eliminating additional funds earmarked to cover the administrative costs of Croatia’s accession to the EU, expected to take place in July 2013. Another ambassador said that there were “many candidates” for cuts in heading 5, the administrative section of the MFF. “I’m sure that heading 5 will go down” during summit negotiations, he said.

Officials believe that it is unrealistic to hope for more than “a few billions” at best in additional savings from the administrative heading, but achieving the cuts is important politically, notably for Cameron.

Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, argues that the Commission’s proposal for the MFF will save €1bn by 2020, by raising the retirement age of officials, cutting staff by 5%, and increasing working hours. The Commission also wants to prolong the current crisis levy of 5.5% on all staff salaries. Without an agreement, the crisis levy would expire at the end of the year, delivering an instant pay rise to staff in all EU institutions.

In a letter to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, sent last Friday (16 November), the Commission’s staff unions complained about the “continual deterioration of the working conditions” that further cuts would create. In a pamphlet calling for yesterday’s demonstration, the unions warned that “severe cuts in the European civil service” could threaten the European project.